by Michael Duca

Quick Candlestick memories: I remember a game in 1960 which is the first major league game I ever attended and sat in lower reserve section 12 with my dad and watched Juan Marichal beat the Pittsburgh Pirates. Probably the most anticipated game that I ever went to was one whose radio call and it was “27 years of waiting has come to an end” by Giant broadcaster Hank Greenwald.

On a play that the Chicago Cubs Ryne Sandberg hit for a jelly leg on a curve ball grounder that Giants second baseman Robby Thomson fielded for the final out in the NLCS for the Giants first bid since moving to San Francisco to get into the World Series in 1989. The best moment that I will ever remember was former Giant pitcher Dave Dravecky making his comeback.

Can the Giants close the gap on the Dodgers in the second half of the campaign? Of course they can, that doesn’t mean they will but they certainly can. They’ve got enough games left with the Dodgers and that alone can close the gap. Every year it’s where the Giants end up in the post season somewhere around July late June we write them off.

Then Giants vice president of operations Brian Sabean would work his magic and sprinkle his powers on Harry Potter’s magic wand and away we go with somebody showing up with an array of former Giant saviors Kenny Lofton (2002 team), Cody Ross, Pat Burell, or whoever shows up and provides a spark and turns things around. Sometimes it’s Giants pitcher Javier Lopez.

The Giants who are coming off a six game winning streak before dropping a tough 4-2 loss in San Diego Monday night. They have to be a little bit concerned about pitcher Tim Hudson and he did not pitch particularly well on Monday night he struggled all night and to be honest with you the Giants need to be a little concerned about their ace Madison Bumgarner.

Bumgarner has not been as crisp as were used to seeing him and as dominant as were used to seeing him he’s required a lot of pitches to get through a lot of innings. That’s going to get costly as time goes by if your rotation horses not assuming seven innings every time out, then your going to the well a little too much in the bullpen and you may not have what you need.